Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins discussed The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe” in a new Rolling Stone article.
“Albert Hammond Sr, the father of Albert Hammond Jr. of the Strokes, wrote this. I think this is one of the most fucking beautiful songs, ever. Radiohead got sued over it since it sounds a lot like ‘Creep.’ I discovered them late in life. They’ve got a cool drummer. This is from after Graham Nash left. It was sort of their last hurrah.”
He also discussed his love of The Police’s “Synchronicity II.”
“I love how the song tells the story of how everyday simple life drives you bonkers. I think by that point Sting was like, ‘I don’t want to be in a band anymore.’ There are certain guys like David Bowie and Sting that just aren’t band guys, never were. They’d rather just do it themselves, or at least not hear from the nosey asshole drummer in the back. They were a democracy to a certain degree, but they slowly faded out of democracy and I don’t think the other guys could handle it.
Stewart Copeland is one of my heroes. I love him to death. The best music that Sting ever made was with Stewart Copeland. That’s the fucking truth. That’s partially because he had some guy in the back going, ‘Nah, that’s stupid! Let’s try it like this.’ I understand Sting was probably like, ‘Fuck it, I don’t want to deal with that shit.’ I think they still loved each other though.
Synchronicity is definitely the record where you could hear them them changing. It was the poppier version of Ghost in the Machine. Something about Synchronicity is kind of bright. I mean, once he wrote ‘Every Breath You Take’ he could go be Sting. It was definitely signaling the end, but they were a machine at that point.”
